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Post by wayvis on Apr 10, 2024 20:02:29 GMT -5
Cats also roamed all over the southeast before hogs. How many plants and animals haven't survived because of hog? Hogs like most wildlife can cause problems like most wildlife if not controlled by humans or predators. Where is the FWC holding deer population levels artificially high? FWC tries to manage on a Maximum Sustainable Yield (MSY). "MSY aims at a balance between too much and too little harvest to keep the population at some intermediate abundance with a maximum replacement rate." My question is why are we having quail hunting with quail numbers so low? Would science not dictate that we should not be hunting quail. The quail question is interesting. There are probably more quail on public lands now than there were decades ago before widespread use of prescribed fire. I know I see more coveys every year. Were quail populations artificially high due to the abundance of small farms in the 30s-60s, probably so. Habitat loss is the main reason for fewer quail, as it is the main reason for the degradation of most ecosystems. Deer as a whole are more abundant in Florida than ever before, just not, apparently, in the southern region that overlaps with cats. But are the diminished deer populations unnatural, or a return to more natural?
Here are some sources for info.
Probably more info on destructive pigs than anyone wants to read.
UGA deer panther study - panthers eat deer.
Southeastern deer pops over time
Its good to hear that you are seeing more quail in your area, but that is not the norm. All quail pops are down in the southeast for at least the last 20 years. I hardly ever hear a quail whistle in the spring anymore. In the 60's and 70's you always heard quail in the spring around most woodlots in Florida. Your correct, habitat loss is usually a big reason for any decline in a species, but for quial it's not the only reason and the experts are still not sure what the problems are. Managing wildlife is a very difficult job, because you have so many different interests and opinions on what they should be. Just like the bears, many people would like to see more, but most people that have to live with them would like to see less. So, what is a wildlife agency to do, manage for the species or manage for a stakeholder's group or groups. As long as a species is healthy and not causing habitat degradation, I don't think you could call it artificially high. So, do you really feel that the FWC is holding deer pops artificially high for whiny hunters?
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Post by cyclist on Apr 10, 2024 20:12:53 GMT -5
The quail question is interesting. There are probably more quail on public lands now than there were decades ago before widespread use of prescribed fire. I know I see more coveys every year. Were quail populations artificially high due to the abundance of small farms in the 30s-60s, probably so. Habitat loss is the main reason for fewer quail, as it is the main reason for the degradation of most ecosystems. Deer as a whole are more abundant in Florida than ever before, just not, apparently, in the southern region that overlaps with cats. But are the diminished deer populations unnatural, or a return to more natural?
Here are some sources for info.
Probably more info on destructive pigs than anyone wants to read.
UGA deer panther study - panthers eat deer.
Southeastern deer pops over time
Its good to hear that you are seeing more quail in your area, but that is not the norm. All quail pops are down in the southeast for at least the last 20 years. I hardly ever hear a quail whistle in the spring anymore. In the 60's and 70's you always heard quail in the spring around most woodlots in Florida. Your correct, habitat loss is usually a big reason for any decline in a species, but for quial it's not the only reason and the experts are still not sure what the problems are. Managing wildlife is a very difficult job, because you have so many different interests and opinions on what they should be. Just like the bears, many people would like to see more, but most people that have to live with them would like to see less. So, what is a wildlife agency to do, manage for the species or manage for a stakeholder's group or groups. As long as a species is healthy and not causing habitat degradation, I don't think you could call it artificially high. So, do you really feel that the FWC is holding deer pops artificially high for whiny hunters? I don't think any species should be managed for hunters, I think they should be managed for specues and ecosystem health, good genetics and for the species itself. We as hunters, should feel fortunate that many species are in a healthy enough state with good genetics to allow hunting. Quail, ducks, bears kinda fall into a gray area in many areas if the southeast.
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Post by nuthinfancy on Apr 10, 2024 21:27:38 GMT -5
Its good to hear that you are seeing more quail in your area, but that is not the norm. All quail pops are down in the southeast for at least the last 20 years. I hardly ever hear a quail whistle in the spring anymore. In the 60's and 70's you always heard quail in the spring around most woodlots in Florida. Your correct, habitat loss is usually a big reason for any decline in a species, but for quial it's not the only reason and the experts are still not sure what the problems are. Managing wildlife is a very difficult job, because you have so many different interests and opinions on what they should be. Just like the bears, many people would like to see more, but most people that have to live with them would like to see less. So, what is a wildlife agency to do, manage for the species or manage for a stakeholder's group or groups. As long as a species is healthy and not causing habitat degradation, I don't think you could call it artificially high. So, do you really feel that the FWC is holding deer pops artificially high for whiny hunters? I don't think any species should be managed for hunters, I think they should be managed for specues and ecosystem health, good genetics and for the species itself. We as hunters, should feel fortunate that many species are in a healthy enough state with good genetics to allow hunting. Quail, ducks, bears kinda fall into a gray area in many areas if the southeast. You don’t think wildlife should be managed for hunters, yet conservation and management by hunters is the only reason we still have high levels of game in North America and elsewhere like Africa. Maybe stick to riding bikes and leave the game management to us whiny hunters.
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Post by cyclist on Apr 11, 2024 7:37:24 GMT -5
I don't think any species should be managed for hunters, I think they should be managed for specues and ecosystem health, good genetics and for the species itself. We as hunters, should feel fortunate that many species are in a healthy enough state with good genetics to allow hunting. Quail, ducks, bears kinda fall into a gray area in many areas if the southeast. You don’t think wildlife should be managed for hunters, yet conservation and management by hunters is the only reason we still have high levels of game in North America and elsewhere like Africa. Maybe stick to riding bikes and leave the game management to us whiny hunters. Game animals and wildlife do just fine in the huge amount of conservation land that doesn't allow hunting. Hunting helps in areas where man has screwed up the environmental, namely areas where we have eliminated the top predators. But you are right, hunters bring in lots of money and money makes the world go around.
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Post by ogbohica on Apr 11, 2024 8:19:04 GMT -5
On a particular chunk of land in glades county they are tring to get rid of hogs as well, but the deer herd has suffered according to the fawns not being seen as prevalent as previous years. The main landholder in Glades County is apparently conducting that experiment right now. For 3 years they have allowed a local high fence outfitter to trap thousands of hogs off a large lease, of which he is not a member, decimating the hog population by at least 90%. I saw one fawn this weekend in over 50 miles of buggy riding.
Unfortunately, I already know what the result is going to be because I lived it in the late 90's in Turner River, then in Hendry County.
Yup, well aware and its sad but its all about the $$$ them hogs are ruff on sod
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Post by bullfrog on Apr 11, 2024 9:13:14 GMT -5
You don’t think wildlife should be managed for hunters, yet conservation and management by hunters is the only reason we still have high levels of game in North America and elsewhere like Africa. Maybe stick to riding bikes and leave the game management to us whiny hunters. Game animals and wildlife do just fine in the huge amount of conservation land that doesn't allow hunting. Hunting helps in areas where man has screwed up the environmental, namely areas where we have eliminated the top predators. But you are right, hunters bring in lots of money and money makes the world go around. You and I don’t necessarily disagree as much on local environmental issues as much as our differing politics otherwise might suggest. I would point out for your consideration that there’s not any major, land-based, ecological system on earth where humans haven’t been the dominant predator for thousands of years. We’ve never scientifically observed any environment where humans weren’t already living and impacting the wildlife. We know that historically, Native American groups engaged in willful predator control regimes. That’s why wolf-puppy is a delicacy in many NA cultures. It was too hard to control wolf populations by hunting the adults with stone-age technology. Therefore the Indians learned how to find their dens and take the puppies out. They did this with the willful objective of controlling wolf numbers. That observation doesn’t necessarily invalidate many of your points. But it is an asterisk to consider. Take the Everglades, bears, and panthers. The Everglades are naturally poor habitat for large mammal predators such as the panther, which depends on a robust deer population for much of its diet. The pre-Columbian peoples of south Florida would have hunted predators with impunity. The limits of stone-age hunting implements would have been offset by a lack of rules and a high level of skill and physical ability of the hunters. For thousands of years, humans were checking predator numbers. Now enter modern Florida. Development has ruined much of it, but nonetheless a large swath of the Everglades have been preserved. But now natives are no longer prowling and hunting at will. How does that change the dynamics? If humans previously checked the lesser apex predators and now no longer do, and where humans have contaminated the environment in ways that make the habitat even less conducive for predators than it was 200 years ago, why would we think unchecked predator numbers are a good thing now?
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Post by meateater on Apr 11, 2024 9:16:06 GMT -5
Meat, why would you pass on them if you know the problems they cause? They are a plague. If we could flip a switch and get rid of every one, we’d all be better off. i should have explained better, in areas with cougars, if you want good deer numbers and also a healthy population of cougars you better have hogs, some of you guys are all about the science so go ahead and do your research. i kill hogs in areas that have plenty of hogs and no cougar problem, jw corbett and hungryland are 2 examples. all of big cypress and parts of the glades hogs are basically gone and deer numbers will continue to go down. thats a fact.
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Post by bullfrog on Apr 11, 2024 9:28:14 GMT -5
Hogs have been in Florida for about 500 years. That’s a long time. We’ve never scientifically observed Florida without hogs. Whatever plants and animal eggs they’re eating now, they were also eating in 1800.
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Post by walkerdog on Apr 11, 2024 9:45:59 GMT -5
The main landholder in Glades County is apparently conducting that experiment right now. For 3 years they have allowed a local high fence outfitter to trap thousands of hogs off a large lease, of which he is not a member, decimating the hog population by at least 90%. I saw one fawn this weekend in over 50 miles of buggy riding.
Unfortunately, I already know what the result is going to be because I lived it in the late 90's in Turner River, then in Hendry County.
Yup, well aware and its sad but its all about the $$$ them hogs are ruff on sod You’re not wrong that generating revenue is important to agricultural landowners, just as it is to any other business owner. It’s pretty short sighted though to think that pasture damage is the only problem that hogs cause. Or even the main one. The problem depends on the location. What you said would be true for a flortam sod field owner. But it wouldn’t apply to many other ag land uses, of which there are many. I talked to a row crop farmer not long ago who had $10k/acre invested in producing his crop. Hogs were a significant financial liability for his operation from a variety of perspectives beyond just rooting. Most hunters aren’t worried about what’s happening on the other side of the fence, if they have plenty of hogs. The landowner needs to think well beyond that though and find the balance that is most beneficial. Among other things, hogs can also be detrimental to the management of native habitat and native wildlife, they present disease issues, etc. While meat is correct that hogs can, in some circumstances, be a benefit to other prey species by providing an alternate food source for panthers that reduces their predation on deer and other native wildlife populations, thats only true to a certain extent. When hog numbers are left unmanaged, as would be the case in what most hunters want hog numbers to look like, they exceed the point of adding benefit and are actually detrimental to the other native wildlife they share the habitat with, in that they out compete them for mast and other food sources to the point of negatively impacting their populations. Again, having the right balance in hog density for the circumstances you’re working within is what determines if they are being managed appropriately or not.
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Post by cyclist on Apr 11, 2024 10:03:22 GMT -5
Hogs have been in Florida for about 500 years. That’s a long time. We’ve never scientifically observed Florida without hogs. Whatever plants and animal eggs they’re eating now, they were also eating in 1800. They have been in Florida for a while, but like some invasive species it takes a while to reach a threshold that become very detrimental. There are many areas in Florida where hogs in the last 20 years, or even 5 years have become extremely destructive. At least in north central Florida.
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Post by cracker4112 on Apr 11, 2024 10:34:47 GMT -5
Honest question. Why? Pigs have been invasive in Florida for generations, habitat has shrunk dramatically, yet there are more pigs in the places i frequent than at any time in my 50yrs. Shouldn’t they have taken over a long time ago?
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Post by meateater on Apr 11, 2024 11:12:52 GMT -5
Honest question. Why? Pigs have been invasive in Florida for generations, habitat has shrunk dramatically, yet there are more pigs in the places i frequent than at any time in my 50yrs. Shouldn’t they have taken over a long time ago? ive seen wmas in the south zone that where way outa control 15 or so years ago but against everything you have always been told, like you can never get rid of them fwc did exactly that. picayune strand,additions land,rotenburger,holeyland,area 3,all of big cypress,area 3 south and 2,rocky glades and a few others im sure i missed hogs are gone. and now dinner island, ok slough and spirit of the wild may have 15% what they once had. i dont care much about hogs but i do care about deer and turkeys so if your gonna do everything you can to help the extremely rare endangered only 165 left in the state cougars maybe you should have made sure there main food source didnt disappear. the science is out , 1 adult cougar needs to kill a good size meal once a week just do the freaking math if there not eating hogs whats next in line, pythons getting the rabbits,coons,possums,birds,ect and plenty of fawns so the deer herd in south florida has a uphill battle. poor management.
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Post by ogbohica on Apr 11, 2024 13:16:34 GMT -5
Its much easier to flood the Glades or even Lake Okeechobee if nothing as far as animals are left... make sense? Thats why they are pushing so hard for this corridor, so the Cougars can just keep moving north.
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Post by wayvis on Apr 11, 2024 13:44:37 GMT -5
In the late 60's GFC would trap hogs at the carnival space center (no hunting) and put them in Guana River WMA just before deer season for the hunters to hunt. This was before quota hunts. No hunting on public and private land is the biggest reason why hog population explode in many areas. Even on WMAs that allow hunting most are short quota hunts which aren't enough to control hogs. On private leases where you can hunt them most of the year it's still hard to control them because most hunters don't want to mess with them. So when they get the cats move north, they will have plenty to eat for a while.
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Post by walkerdog on Apr 11, 2024 14:00:30 GMT -5
Its much easier to flood the Glades or even Lake Okeechobee if nothing as far as animals are left... make sense? Thats why they are pushing so hard for this corridor, so the Cougars can just keep moving north. If that were the case, they would have already done so. They aren’t creating a corridor. They are just trying to preserve what they feel are the most valuable parts of the one we already have. I suppose some of the underpasses on I-4 that they are advocating for, etc. might be able to be claimed as creation but no new habitat is being created by their effort. Nor is it intended to be.
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